I actually don't have the need to use smart watches, the original wearing of citizen five rounds of electric wave meter has been very good to use: no need to charge, no need to manually calibrate, with a custom strap as an ornament is also very good.
Original steel strap with custom cowhide strap
So this is a "deliberate" impulse consumption, on the one hand, you need to use consumption to make yourself happier, on the other hand, you also hope to make up the Samsung family bucket and experience whether the "Galaxy Ecosystem" can play in the end. Of course, the Galaxy Watch4 must have features or functions that make me shine, and I will click to pay like "meteorite hits the head", including the new Wear OS and the seemingly powerful "body composition detection" function at the conference.
Now this watch has been in my hands for two months, let's talk about what the Galaxy Watch4 (hereinafter referred to as the Watch4) brought me.
▍ A smart watch is a watch after all
Compared with traditional watches, smart watches already belong to the category of electronic digital products, but their essence is still a watch. Watches should abide by "morality": good looks, comfortable to wear, easy to view. The Watch4 is qualified as a watch.
The piece I have in my hand is the Watch4 44mm Valley Green version, which is more visually army green. Although Samsung products are not as rich as Apple Watch accessories, it is fortunate that it uses a quick-release strap and can support many general accessories. The 44mm diameter is still a bit of a show for me personally, and the Classic 46mm version is very much in line with my aesthetic, but it has no advantages in performance or endurance except for a physical rotating bezel. The only thing that makes me dissatisfied is that Samsung's own mobile phones belong to the narrow bezel leader, and what reason does the Watch4 still let the border stop the aircraft carrier?
When the light is good, it will appear army green
At first glance, the Watch4 is very thin, but this is just a visual coincidence, Samsung uses the outermost circle of the watch body a narrow aluminum alloy border to guide the user's line of sight, we will unconsciously ignore the upper and lower two black parts. Doesn't it sound like "ID without borders"?
The actual thickness is almost the same, and the Watch4 is designed to make it visually thinner
However, it is very commendable that although the thickness of the Watch4 is almost the same as my original Citizen, its weight is so light that it is almost insensitive when worn. However, because it has no sense of weight, the previous watch habits also made me "unaccustomed", for example, before I felt that the watch was uncomfortable to wear, raise my arm and shake it casually, the watch can "slip" to a comfortable position, but now it is not - the health detection function requires the watch to be close to the skin, and the weight becomes lighter, it does not move at all.
Nearly double the weight gap (heavier if the steel strap is)
Another direction of appearance is the dial. Smartwatches don't need to worry about this aspect at all, and the galaxy watch's classic dials have been extended to the Watch4 (including my once favorite petal dial). If the first-party dial can't beat it, there are various third-party dial applications. What's more, after in-depth cooperation with Google, Samsung developed the Watch Face Studio watch face maker tool for Wear OS 3, and we can see the detailed use of the Android developer website. Although the production process is a bit complicated, the process of the DIY dial is full of fun.
At the moment I'm choosing a Line Friends co-branded watch face. The reason for choosing it is simple, because the dial is like the lock screen or launcher of a mobile phone for smart watches, it must not only look good, but also show information - this is also the meaning of the existence of smart watches.
This dial can display status and information in a beautiful and functional form at the user's entrance: Brown Bear will show different actions according to different states (bear control ecstasy), such as Brown Bear will turn off the lights to watch movies when disconnected from the phone, walk with friends when exercising, wear headphones and shake his head when listening to songs, and knock on the screen to tell you "Hey, look here" when the new message is reminded. This is the characteristic that the smart watch dial should have, rather than blindly pursuing gorgeous and cool.
Speaking of easy viewing, we have to mention Samsung's iconic "rotating bezel". The Watch4 is positioned to be an iteration of watch Active and Active2, so it's equipped with the same virtual rotating bezel, combined with a linear motor and speakers, to simulate a mechanical texture when turning pages. However, in terms of sensitivity, I don't know whether the function is reversed, the sensitivity calibration is too conservative or because of the abandonment of the curved screen, Watch4 must touch the edge of the inner screen to be recognized, I still prefer Active2 to touch the arc surface can also achieve interactive operation.
Powered by Samsung: Is it a lifesaver or a camel crush
Reminder: Galaxy Watch4 with its own Samsung mobile phone will pick the region, the Bank of China can only match the Bank of China (some netizens broke the overseas version of the watch successfully connected to the Bank of China mobile phone, but to be verified).
In the smart wearable market, Samsung and Google can be described as difficult brothers and sisters, and it is difficult to reproduce their success in smart phones: Tizen has a difficult life, is stunted, and relies only on Samsung's own watches and TVs to rely on each other; Wear OS was once in a "half-cut" state, so that the outside world rumored that Google "closed the department" has a new job, and domestic manufacturers simply ignore Wear OS and directly change Android into small watches.
So it seems that if you don't want to be a deserter in this war, then it is also very wise for the two "giant of smart phones and the dwarf of smart wear" to join forces. For Wear OS itself, it used to be "by Google", and now it is called "Powered by Samsung", how to look like Google is powerless to return to heaven, directly outsourcing Wear OS to Samsung. However, from the market survey, after the release of Watch4 Wear OS market share has increased significantly, the cooperation between the two strong forces has indeed been remarkable, and the two big camels have also found a life-saving straw.
Whether it is divided by brand or by system, both shipments have risen significantly
Integrated Tizen features, the two jointly created a unified platform Wear OS 3 is currently only equipped with the Watch4 series, after putting on its own One UI, star powder is still familiar to use, the home page operation is not much different from most smart watches: swipe left and right to switch cards, long press to change the dial style and card content.
However, compared with the previous Tizen-based One UI, this generation also has many changes, for example, in the past, the app icon was around the screen, and it was more logical to select the app by rotating the bezel, and now it is a very common vertical list, which cannot be echoed with the iconic rotating bezel.
Compared with Apple watchOS, the Wear OS ecology can be said to be "extremely barren", but it is much better than Tizen, after all, it has accumulated some reliable applications over the years. The built-in service framework of the BANK watch is incomplete, and it is difficult to damage the root due to the existence of Knox (but because it is Orion, it is still possible to toss it?). Therefore, there is no way to use Google Play at present, and the Galaxy Store of the National Bank of China is basically a decoration, so you can only rely on sideload to play Wear OS.
The list of horizontal board applications looks a bit more convenient
Let's talk a little bit about the apps I installed on my watch. In addition to Samsung's own PPT controller, Buds controller and other gadgets, there are weChat, Alipay, Baidu Maps, Air Travel Zongheng and other third-party apps listed on the Bank of China Store, which are all castrated versions, such as WeChat can not be used away from the mobile phone, the latest version of Alipay has removed the ride code, Baidu Map can only present the route prompt without a map, and so on. In addition, I have uploaded Spotify for Wear OS 3 and Google Maps, the latter of which has no practical use, but because its experience is too good to delete.
Left: Alipay removed the ride code | Right: The Spotify watch client works well
Regarding applications, one of the main uses of smart watches is to view the required notification overview, Watch4 has many sub-segmentation options in terms of notifications, including which applications need to read out notifications in the watch notification, notification screen, notification rules when the phone is used, ringtones and vibration modes of different notifications, etc. A little setting can get a good notification experience - in addition to small and beautiful.
Here you need to take up space to spit on the small and beautiful: I don't know whether the application originally had a problem or did not adapt to Wear OS 3, when receiving the message, the watch will receive two notifications of "notification from the mobile phone" and "watch client" - even if the system has recognized the association of "watch auxiliary application"; and now in 2022, the mobile phone client does not support the notification bar quick reply, resulting in the watch receiving the mobile phone relay notification can not call the quick reply list. So isn't the small and beautiful watch client great? The answer is of course no, its function is extremely shabby, even if you connect wifi can not get away from the phone Bluetooth use, but also inexplicably pop up some mute group of regular messages, Chinese Simplified mode is not to give the keyboard input function (Jane In Android users should not deserve a good experience?). All in all, the small and beautiful Wear OS version is a lifesaver for hypotension patients.
▍ Health & Exercise Tracking
One of the core functions of smart wearable devices is the recording and detection of health and fitness activities. Heart rate, blood oxygen, and pressure detection are basically routine operations, and it is very convenient to use, after all, Samsung has built-in relevant sensors in the mobile phone a long time ago, and from the changes in the Samsung health App, we can see the importance of Samsung in this regard, which is not repeated here. Here are a few other features.
When performing breathing training, the linear motor also gives feedback through changes in strength and weakness
▍ BIA-based body composition testing
Samsung has added a new "BIA-based body composition detection" function on the Watch4, which is a bit similar to the kind of test that everyone conducts in the gym, which realizes the scanning calculation of body composition through two electrodes on the back of the watch and two buttons on the side of the watch. Samsung said at the press conference that the function can achieve 98% accuracy compared with DEXA (bone density scanning).
The animations are cool
While I can't find out if it's accurate, it can be used as a reference for occasional testing. Wear the watch tightly when using, start this function in the watch end of Samsung Health, according to the guidance of the middle finger and ring finger close to the side of the two buttons, while ensuring that the back of the watch is close to the skin, after a few tens of seconds you can detect skeletal muscle, body fat rate, moisture content and other data. This unexpected do not know, a test of a frightened, I think thin as a bamboo pole, the body fat content has entered the red range, it seems that more exercise is needed.
Unexpectedly, it turned out that I belonged to the thin fat man
▍ Motion tracking
Samsung watches have always had good exercise and fitness features, and this generation supports 80+ motion tracking, but auto-detect only supports four sports: walking, running, swimming, and vitality fitness. The range of vitality fitness seems to be very large, basically as long as it is a strenuous exercise will be included here. For example, some time ago, the company team building, a group of people in the playground to throw frisbee, Watch4 will mark the exercise of this time as vitality fitness
It should be noted that the automatic detection of exercise needs to be labeled and recorded after 10 minutes of continuous activity, but in fact, from about 2 minutes from the beginning of the activity, the Watch4 will trigger motion tracking and continuously monitor the heart rate, and will also retrieve the state at the beginning of the exercise forward, only at 10 minutes before it will be reminded and recorded as exercise alone.
Left: Walking | is detected automatically Right: Fitness program guidance linked to the phone
The Samsung Health App works with many fitness content providers to use fitness programs and instructional videos from content providers such as Keep and BlessLife in the same app. When carrying out a fitness activity, the watch will also be linked with the mobile phone to continuously detect the heart rate, blood oxygen and other indicators, and give action guidance on the watch side.
▍ Sleep monitoring
The Watch4 automatically detects if a user is asleep and starts recording sleep. At the end of each recording, Samsung Health will give a more stylized analysis conclusion, including the proportion of sleep cycles, sleep recommendations and so on. However, the blood oxygen record of the sleep process only gives a numerical range, and it is not presented in a chart style like the heart rate, so it is difficult to know which time there is a problem with breathing.
Pro-test: Snoring after drinking and sleeping
At the press conference, Samsung also showed the snoring detection implemented with the Galaxy phone. This feature is powered by Sleep Cycle, which requires the phone to have a power input, a charging cable or wireless charging, and then place the phone not far from the pillow. Once the watch detects that the user is asleep, the phone starts listening for breathing sounds. Personal experience: do not open, do not open, do not open, otherwise you will be particularly embarrassed after waking up. Fortunately, it does not currently support dream detection, otherwise I don't know what gibberish I will hear.
Watch4 actually supports sleep monitoring in the nap state, but it takes more than 1 hour to sleep to be triggered, and the lunch break for half an hour will not be recorded, and the practicality is greatly reduced.
▍ECG with blood pressure testing
Now smartwatches are embarrassed to call themselves smartwatches without promoting ECG – even if there are many obstacles to the launch of these functions. But the good news is that apple watch has launched ECG functions, indicating that this type of technology is still of reference significance. And according to good gossip, the Watch4 ECG function has also been reviewed in China.
In the current situation, watch4 using ECG and blood pressure monitoring function is actually very simple, XDA has a developer to make a Samsung Health Monitor application that lifts the regional restrictions, only need to install the corresponding apk file on the watch and mobile phone respectively, and then open the synchronization function of this data through the developer mode in Samsung Health. Blood pressure measurements can be seen in Samsung Health, but ECG charts can only be viewed through Samsung Health Monitor or exported as PDF.
The ECG function is ready to use and can detect whether the user has a sinus rhythm or whether there is a risk of ventricular fibrillation, but because it is a single lead, it can only be used as a daily reference. Blood pressure monitoring is more tedious, requiring calibration by a sphygmomanometer every 28 days, and each calibration requires 3 values. The calibrated blood pressure test results are very accurate, and even after ten days, the error between the test value and the blood pressure monitor is very small.
The first time I took my blood pressure measurement, I was pleasantly surprised by the results
▍ Those that should have convenient features
Screen reminder: Different dials have different AOD effects, the effect is really good-looking, but it is more expensive;
Raise your hand to illuminate the screen: sensitive and easy to use, with some dials the effect is amazing (such as petal dial);
Breath screen gesture: lower the wrist or flip the wrist in a direction away from the line of sight will be breath screen, you can also cover the screen with the palm of your hand to rest the screen;
Handwashing detection: it should be called automatic countdown to handwashing, you need to download the app separately, the detection sensitivity follows the edge, and the countdown will continue after stopping handwashing, it will not be automatically interrupted like Apple Watch, the practical significance is not great, the app has been uninstalled;
Sedentary reminder: useful and very easy to use, you can also directly choose to perform simple stretching exercises when the reminder pops up;
Wrist interaction: compared to chicken ribs, you can achieve call control or quickly start the application, but the practical significance is not great;
Voice assistant: Of course, Samsung's own Bixby, can open the bright screen within 5 seconds of voice wake-up, but also support multi-device nearby wake-up, but the supported functions are very imperfect, convenience compared to Siri on apple Watch is indeed a world of difference;
Special mode: provide bedtime mode, do not disturb, theater mode, fall detection and alarm, the first two modes of the official introduction can achieve two-way synchronization with the status of the mobile phone, but at present only realize the two-way synchronization function of do not disturb.
▍ Battery life and charging
Why should I put battery life and charging at the end? Because I realized before I bought it: at this stage of the smart watch do not have to worry about battery life (here does not include RTOS watches), one charge a day or two days a charge for me personally does not make any difference.
In general, I will maintain the following usage status:
Exercise and health: automatic detection of exercise is turned on, heart rate detection is every 10 minutes, and continuous monitoring of blood oxygen during sleep is turned on;
Watch settings: automatic brightness, raise your hand to illuminate the screen, Bixby voice wake-up, wrist interaction, notification reminder only open WeChat, TG, work communication tools and other common notifications;
Functions and applications: during commuting, you will use your mobile phone to listen to songs, sometimes you will wake up the mobile phone through the watch client Spotify, and the watch also needs to monitor the status of the mobile phone player after playing music; when it is inconvenient, it will occasionally start a common app such as WeChat, calculator, calendar and so on the watch.
Under this intensity of use, the Watch4 can be charged for two days: the first night is fully charged and worn to sleep, and the third day after work home will pop up a low battery reminder (less than 15%), and it is no problem to wear and sleep after filling again before taking a bath at night.
The washing machine charging base in the gift box is really cute, and it can even change the color scheme of the control panel
In terms of charging, the Watch4's charging speed is much better than I thought, basically maintaining for about half an hour to increase the power from 30% to 80%. In addition, some users are suspicious of Watch4 wireless charging is not using a private protocol, in fact, Watch4 is to support Qi wireless charging protocol, I put the watch on the Xiaomi charging board for testing, the watch can pop up the charging prompt, the wireless charging pad indicator light also lights up to indicate the start of charging, but the blink of an eye kung fu will be interrupted, may be due to the size of the watch charging coil is too small, the coil induction on the ordinary wireless charging board is not stable enough, so it is still necessary to use the wireless charger dedicated to the watch.
▍ Lower expectations, Samsung users who have needs will not regret it
From the product itself, Galaxy Watch4 is a very good smart watch, in the hardware it represents Samsung's own chip research and development, screen manufacturing, system integration and design capabilities, in the software Samsung gave up its own Tizen embrace Wear OS also means that Samsung has broken the boat, determined to carry out more in-depth cooperation with Google.
However, in the mainland scope, Watch4 is slightly embarrassing: on the one hand, "other" reasons, smart watches have the characteristics of expanding the applicable scenarios of mobile phones, but the market share of Samsung mobile phones in the mainland region is still very low, and when each company is creating its own ecology, Galaxy Watch4 is difficult to rely on the word "ecology" to expand the share of smart wear; on the other hand, in terms of playability and localization convenience, whether it is Samsung or Wear OS, it is not the same as the world's first echelon Apple Watch is even the wearable product of a large domestic manufacturer, so it is difficult to compete with product power.
So this product, even if it does not limit the Android device brand, but at this stage it still belongs only to star fans. If it is a user in the Samsung ecosystem, has sports and fitness habits or "special needs" to use the watch to supplement the inconvenience of viewing the mobile phone, then the purchase of Watch4 will not regret; and if it is another brand user, or simply curious about how this product is, then it is still recommended to hold the coin and wait and see, shop around.
P.S. Another good news is that according to the relevant KOL news, with the rise in sales of Samsung watches, the Plan for the Launch of the Samsung Pay Watch Terminal that Star Fans have been looking forward to has been restarted, and the bus card and access control card functions will presumably be launched. The NFC hardware in the Galaxy Watch series, which has been eating ashes, is finally in the forefront.
painted eggshell